How things can be missed
Some of the most common ways people with dementia or cognitive issues might overlook property tax payments, according to the treasurer’s office, include:
- Unopened or misplaced mail: Tax notices may be ignored, misplaced, or mistakenly discarded.
- Confusion with deadlines: Cognitive decline can make it difficult to track annual or semi-annual tax due dates.
- Inability to navigate financial systems: They may struggle to access online payment systems or manage banking tasks.
- Scams or fraudulent activity: Individuals with dementia are more vulnerable to scams, which may drain their financial resources and cause them to fall behind on essential payments.
- Impaired judgment: They may believe their property taxes are already paid or assume a past arrangement is still in place when it is not.
“Those are things we just get once, maybe twice, a year, and they can easily go missed,” said Dayna Ritchey, program director for Greater Cincinnati and Miami Valley Chapters of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Penalties can stack up
The treasurer’s office has encountered numerous cases where older residents with cognitive impairments unknowingly fell behind on their property taxes, McManus said.
One example includes a woman in her 80s who had lived in her home for more than 40 years, he said. She began missing payments when her memory declined.
“Her adult children assumed she was keeping up with her finances as she always had, but they only realized there was an issue when they received a foreclosure notice. By the time they reached out for help, significant penalties had accumulated,” McManus said.
The treasurer’s office worked with her family to establish a delinquency payment plan that prevented her from losing her home, he said.
“But this situation underscored the urgent need for a proactive approach to help families before they reach a crisis point,” McManus said.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Situations like that also underscore the importance of not overlooking signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Signs that they may not be keeping up with bill payments can included family members starting to accrue overdraft fees at their bank, utilities getting shut off and/or credit cards might get declined.
“Their property could be foreclosed on and seized by the county, and so you wouldn’t want that happen not only for generational purposes, but literally your loved one could be without a home,” Ritchey said.
Upcoming ‘Home Secure’ workshop
To help caregivers and others, the Alzheimer’s Association and treasurer’s office will hold a workshop on this topic from 6:30-8 p.m. March 6 at the Dayton Metro Library – Kettering Moraine Branch, located at 3496 Far Hills Ave. in Dayton.
The workshop will provide essential insights into foreclosure prevention, property tax relief programs, early outreach and resources from the treasurer’s office, the Real Estate Prepayment Program (PREP), the Homestead Exemption, securing essential legal documents and financial counseling.
There are 236,200 Ohioans 65 and older living with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association 2024 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures. More than 4,900 Ohioans died from Alzheimer’s in 2021. A total of 414,000 Ohio caregivers provide 624 million hours of unpaid care each year, valued at over $11.4 billion.
How to get help
To learn more about Alzheimer’s or other dementia and to access free support and resources, visit www.alz.org/dayton or call the Miami Valley Chapter at 937-291-3332 or the Association 24/7 Helpline at 800-272-3900.
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